BY THE TIME Jasper helped see off his aunt’s guests, he was bone-tired. Melisande had excused herself from the company shortly after supper. He paused outside the door to the bedroom Aunt Esther had given them. Melisande was probably abed. He twisted the doorknob gently so as to not awaken her. But when he entered the room, he saw that she wasn’t asleep. Instead, she was making a pallet on the floor against the far wall. He halted because he didn’t know whether to laugh or swear.
She looked up and saw him. “Can you hand me the blanket from the bed?”
He nodded, not trusting his voice, and went to the bed to pull off the blanket. What must she think of him? He crossed to the fire and handed the blanket to her.
“Thank you.” She bent and began tucking it about a pile of linens to make a rough mattress.
Did she worry that she’d married a madman? He looked away. The room wasn’t big, but it was cozy. The walls were a gray-blue, the floor covered by a faded brown and rose patterned rug. He went to the window and pulled back the curtain to look out, but the night was so dark, he couldn’t pick anything out. He let the curtain fall. Suchlike must have been and gone. Melisande had already undressed. She wore a pretty lace-trimmed shift and her wrapper.
He took off his coat and began unbuttoning his waistcoat. “Lovely dinner.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Lady Charlotte was most amusing.”
“Mmm.”
He pulled off his neck cloth and then held the strip of material in his fingers, staring down at it blindly. “It’s because of the army, I think.”
She stilled. “What?”
“That.” He tilted his chin toward the pallet, not meeting her eyes. “We all have quirks, the men who came back from war. Some start violently at loud noises. Some can’t stand the sight of blood. Some have nightmares that wake them in the dark of night. And some”—he took a deep breath, closing his eyes—“some cannot bear to sleep in the open. Some fear attack in the night when they sleep and cannot . . . cannot help themselves. They must sleep with their back against the wall and with a lit candle so that they can see the attackers when they come.”
He opened his eyes and said, “It’s a compulsion, I’m afraid. They simply cannot help themselves.”
“I understand,” she said.
Her eyes were gentle, as if she hadn’t just heard that her husband was a lunatic. She bent and continued putting together the pallet. She seemed as if she really did understand. But how could she? How could she accept that her husband was only half a man {nlyt. ? He couldn’t accept it himself.
He poured some wine from a decanter on a table. He stood drinking it and gazing sightlessly into the fire for some time before he remembered what he’d been thinking about when he came to their room.
Jasper set his empty wineglass down and began unbuttoning his waistcoat. “You’ll think me fanciful, but for a moment when we were first introduced to the Holdens, I thought Timothy Holden looked like he recognized you.”
She didn’t reply.
He tossed his waistcoat to a chair and looked over at Melisande. She was plumping the bedding rather overhard. “My lady wife?”
She straightened and looked at him, her chin up, her back stiff, as if she faced a firing squad. “I was engaged to him.”
He simply looked at her. He’d known there was something—someone—but she’d never mentioned an engagement before. Stupid, of him, really. And now that he knew . . . He realized he felt a rising swell of jealousy. She’d set out to marry another man—Timothy Holden—once upon a time. Had she loved pretty Timothy Holden with his red lips?
“Did you love him?” he asked.
She looked at him a moment, then bent to finish putting together the pallet. “It was over ten years ago. I was only eighteen.”
He cocked his head. She hadn’t answered the question. “Where did you meet?”
“At a dinner party like tonight’s.” She picked up a pillow and smoothed the cover. “He sat beside me and was so kind. He didn’t turn away, as most gentlemen did back then, when I didn’t immediately fall into conversation with him.”
Jasper pulled his shirt over his head. He had been one of those ungallant gentlemen, no doubt.
Melisande laid the pillow down on the pallet. “He took me for rides in the park, danced with me at balls, all the things a gentleman does when he courts a lady. He wooed me for several months, and then he asked my father for my hand in marriage. Naturally, Father said yes.”
He sat to shed his hose and shoes. “Then why aren’t you married to him?”
She shrugged. “He proposed in October, and we planned to be married in June.”
Jasper winced. They had been married in June. He went to her and gently helped her out of her wrapper. Then he took her hand and lay down on the pallet with her. She shifted until her head was on his shoulder. He stroked his fingers idly through her long hair. Funny how much more comfortable a pallet could be with her in it.
“I had shopped for a trousseau,” she said quietly, her breath brushing his bare chest. “Sent out invitations, planned the wedding day. Then one day, Timothy came to me and told me he loved another lady. Naturally, I let him go.”
“Naturally,” Jasper growled.
Holden was a filthy ass. To lead on a young, gentle girl and then leave her nearly at the altar was the work of a swine. He stroked {e. s ahis sweet wife’s hair as if soothing her for hurts over a decade old and thought about their marriage and their marriage bed.
At last he sighed. “He was your lover.”
He didn’t bother phrasing it as a question. Still, he was almost surprised when she didn’t deny it.
“Yes, for a while.”
He frowned. Her tone was too flat. He stirred uneasily. “He didn’t force you, did he?”
“No.”
“Or threaten you in any way?”
“No. He was gentle.”
Jasper closed his eyes. God, he hated this. His hand had stopped moving in her hair, and he was conscious that he was gripping a lock.
He exhaled and carefully unfisted his hand. “Then what is it? There’s something more that you’re not telling me, my heart.”
She was silent so long that he began to think he’d imagined it in a jealous haze. Perhaps there was nothing else.
But in the end, she sighed, a lost, lonely sound, and said, “I found out I was increasing, shortly after he broke the engagement.”